The 2018 Mid-Term elections are sixty days away. Today, September 7th, if traditional institutional protocols are followed, is the technical end of any opportunity for FBI and DOJ to publicly release any investigative material that would influence the political landscape.

While it is unknown if Special Counsel Robert Mueller will follow the customary tradition within the 60 day window, it is virtually guaranteed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will. This means that any (presumed to exist) investigations that can collaterally damage the 2018 election -for either party- will be put on hold until after November 6th. The investigation activity may be running in the background, but there will be no public action.

Any ongoing investigations -if any- will likely continue; however, the public release of any information from within the institutions of the DOJ and/or FBI will not happen. There’s no written rule about this, just a general custom and protocol. If this custom is followed we should not anticipate any public releases that would support indictments or accountability toward former political officials and/or politicians participating therein.

That said, there’s a solid argument that Robert Mueller’s team will take the opportunity to pay-back the perceived FBI political violation of this custom (October 2016 regarding the public announcement of the re-opening of the Hillary Clinton investigation), and break the protocol to deliver a retaliatory hit toward President Trump in October 2018.

If, as we have long suspected, the prosecutorial small-group (formerly headed by McCabe and Jim Baker during spygate) selected Mueller, and not vice-versa, then it could be a decision for team leader Andrew Weissmann. Due to the political vindictiveness of Weissmann, he is more likely to carry out an ‘October Surprise‘ political hit while providing Mr. Mueller the optic of clean hands toward the violation.

Additionally, there is a small possibility the Inspector General Michael Horowitz FISA investigation might be carved out from this tradition; and might, just might, release the findings of the third investigation which has been ongoing since March. However, this is only a very small possibility. With the closing of this window, the IG’s FISA report is more likely coming after the November 6th election.

Just after his sentencing, Papadopoulos gave an interview to Jake Tapper of CNN. The headline here is that Papadopoulos says he didn’t share information about the Russians having dirt on Hillary with the campaign, but he can’t completely rule it out either:

The young political operative maintains that he never alerted the Trump campaign about the Russian dirt. But when pressed, Papadopoulos refused to completely shut the door on the possibility that the information made its way to other people on the campaign.
“As far as I remember, I absolutely did not share this information with anyone on the campaign,” Papadopoulos said, adding, “I might have, but I have no recollection of doing so. I can’t guarantee. All I can say is, my memory is telling me that I never shared it with anyone on the campaign.”

Papadopoulos also gave an interview to the NY Times in which he offered a bit more detail about why he didn’t share the information after he received it. He met with Mifsud in late April and Mifsud claimed Russia had Hillary’s emails:

I believe Mifsud was a CIA/MI6 plant, to sting Trump people, and permit the FISA applications. I hope the paperwork can be discovered.

“I’d do it under certain circumstances,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One.

“I think that if we’re going to meet it’s got to be a fair meeting,” he said. “I don’t want to be set up with a perjury trap.”

Rudy Giuliani, an attorney representing the president, told Reuters on Thursday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russia probe, wanted Trump to commit to a follow-up interview after providing written answers to questions about possible coordination between members of Trump’s presidential election campaign and Moscow.

“I don’t see how we can do it,” said Giuliani, who has repeatedly expressed concern about the risk of Trump committing perjury.